Radiotelephone systems employ multiple channels, physical and logical, to communicate with user equipment. These systems are used to communicate both voice and data wirelessly. Communications in traditional cellular radiotelephone communication systems, first generation and second generation, generally involve voice communications and the transfer of small amounts of data. Larger data transmissions are limited as a result of bandwidth, technology and memory limitations. As a result, broadcasting or multicasting relatively large amounts of data to user equipment has therefore not been implemented in these systems.
Currently in the Global System for mobile communication (GSM) a service for short messaging known as the short message service (SMS) uses an SMS cell broadcast server (CBS) to broadcast data over a cell broadcast channel. This one channel is dedicated to the broadcasting of data and is dedicated for this purpose only. Although this is a broadcast implementation, it is suited for lower bit rates and does not lend it self to higher quality of service (QoS) of data streaming or high bit rates, hence the name short message service.
With the advent of faster second generation (2.5G) and new third generation (3G) communication systems, communicating larger amounts of data is now becoming possible, including broadcast and multicasting services. The practicality of broadcasting data to users is leading a plurality of broadcast services to become available. However, as a result of the increasing number of subscribers, the availability of increased data rates and varying broadcast services offered to the user, service providers or operators are deploying networks over multiple frequencies within the same area, allowing greater amounts of data and services to be carried to user equipment. As a result many services may be provided in one service area by one or more service providers and one or more networks. Some networks may employ both 2G and 3G networks together which inherently employs different frequencies. Additionally, in order to distribute user load, system operators assign user equipment to different frequencies. However, when broadcasting large amounts of information, this requires the network operators to allocate significant resources over all deployed frequencies in order to reach all users assigned to the multiple frequencies and transmit the same amounts of data simultaneously.
Consequently, there is a need for a method for use in a wireless communication system operating on multiple frequencies to route broadcast and multicast data to user equipment in an efficient manner.